Editorial: Welfare shouldn't pay the same as working

2013-08-23 14:36:33

Those of us who advocate for limited government are burdened with a responsibility unlike those who prefer to see the state expand. Government growth tends to occur on autopilot. Once new programs are implemented, the impulse is always towards greater funding, expanded services, and all-around mission creep. On the rare occasions when government is constrained, however, there is no such sustaining dynamic.

Few areas underscore that principle more vividly than public assistance for the needy. During the Republican Revolution of the 1990s, congressional conservatives marshaled public opinion and managed to drag a reluctant Bill Clinton to sign welfare reform into law. That package created new incentives for work, limited lifetime benefits and ended the idea of welfare as an entitlement.

Now, more than 15 years later, it has become clear that those efforts were not enough. A report this week by the libertarian Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner and Charles Hughes revealed that, when factoring in all the various public benefits available to low-income individuals, 35 states make it more lucrative to be a welfare recipient than to be employed in a minimum-wage job. Even when those benefits are slightly lower, it should be noted, the incentives remain perverse: Why work for minimum wage, after all, when you could get 95 percent of the income while doing nothing?

Unsurprisingly, California is among the offending states. According to the study, an individual who was utilizing every available benefit offered by the Golden State would be bringing in the equivalent of a $17.87 hourly wage, a figure that adds up to 96.5 percent of the state’s median salary. Under that math, the suckers are the ones going to work for a living.

Make no mistake about it, the villains here aren’t the poor, many of whom long for the dignity of work irrespective of how easy current policies make it to stay out of the labor force. The culpable party is government (all the way from the federal to the local level), which has created such irresponsible incentives in the first place. Such an expansive level of benefits is a gift to the unscrupulous recipient who wants to exploit the system and a temptation to the one who’d prefer to play by the rules.

Even those of us who strongly support individual liberty and personal responsibility recognize the need for a safety net. Unforeseen circumstances occur, and it’s appropriate for the state to temporarily sustain the neediest among us. “Temporary” and “neediest”, however, are the key words. Public assistance should be a springboard back to self-sufficiency, not an invitation to taxpayer-subsidized leisure. In order to realize that goal, California lawmakers should tighten eligibility requirements and reexamine benefit levels.

A soft heart requires keeping the safety net alive. But a tough mind demands that it be recalibrated to empower, rather than infantilize, its recipients.